Are these cool, or what? They were handing them out for free at the free showing of "Groundhog Day" last Saturday. Yes, nice large icepacks, labelled as "Comedy Festival Buttwarmers" and passed out at the gate... you guessed it, cold. You can't beat free stuff at a free movie. Other stuff wasn't free though. "House of Doggs" was there, serving the usual wide variety of hot dogs. Some of their many offerings include:
CHICAGO (Tomato, Pickle, Onion, Sport Pepper, Mustard, Celery Salt)
ALTERNATIVE (Sauerkraut, Cheese, Ketchup)
I got a Southern Rock. It was great. Does anyone have a favorite fancy-hotdog restaurant? Are such places even common?
Postcard of the Day
Back to the "butt warmers", they featured the logo of the Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival: a parka-bundled comedian by a microphone. It reminded me of this postcard from 1917, of "Obleka an Eskimo Woman in Native Costume, showing The Parkie Hood."
The "Traverse City Comedy Arts" festival ended today. I was able to take in a few movies, but the Comedy Arts Festival wasn't just about movies (it showcased standup performances by Roseanne Barr, Jeff Garlin of "Curb your Enthusiasm", and other live comedians). One of the free events was an outdoor showing of "Groundhog Day". Yes, outdoors. I think the temperature dropped from the 20s into the teens at some point during the movie. It was announced before the movie that there would be a live guest who starred in the movie. It turned out to be David Pasquesi, who played the psychiatrist. Oh yes, there was a groundhog there too. Pasquesi is introduced by Michael Moore prior to the movie in the video clip below:
It was really a great time. I had not seen the movie in many years, and the sound and picture quality were excellent. "Groundhog Day" is a great movie to show outdoors, in the dead of winter. So I was wondering, what other movies would be good? Winter movies that are not Christmas-related movies. Yes, no Santa or Scrooge allowed.
I did come up with a few:
"Groundhog Day" Of course
"Frozen Stupid" (a recent Ernest Borgnine icefishing movie taking place on Houghton Lake in Michigan)
"Grumpy Old Men" (the movie Odd Couple get cold and grumpy in Wabasha)
"The Empire Strikes Back". So, have any of my readers in northern Minnesota ever had to slice open a Tauntaun and crawl inside in order to survice a blizzard?
"The Shining". Don't go stir-crazy when the blizzard snows you in, ok?
"Never Cry Wolf" Charles Martin Smith eats a mouse sandwich while researching wolves in the Great White North. Yes, I did go to the theatre to see this one right away when it first came out.
"Grumpier Old Men" (the movie Odd Couple get colder and grumpier in Wabasha, Minnesota)
"March of the Penguins" Feel the deep chill with real-life Chilly Willy's.
Are there any good winter or very chilly cold movies I'm missing? There are only 8 so far, but I will bring it up to 10, and then beyond, with reader suggestions.
And below is the "postcard of the day", a large-letter postcard of Punxsatawny.
"Sometimes the only things a western savage understands are whiskey and rifles and an unarmed man like you." - from "Call of the West" by Wall of Voodoo.
Today's "Postcard Friendship Friday" (PFF) entry takes us back to the old West. To the right is a postcard that is probably from the 1960s of a "Cowboy on a Texas ranch at nightfall". It was printed by the Baxter Lane company in Amarillo, Texas.
I'm one of those "Baby Boomers" who pretty much missed out on the whole Western thing. I remember remants of it: "Gunsmoke" was still on TV in primetime for a while, and there were oddities still on such as "Go Go Gophers", and every TV show from "Star Trek" to "Land of the Lost" seemed to take pains to include a Western episode.
I hardly saw any Western movies. In fact, I can only recall seeing a few ever, and can name them: "Shane" (which I saw as a kid, an d loved), "Back to the Future III", and "Pale Rider' (a more grim Clint Eastwood take on Shane). There might be a couple of others, but I do not remember right now.
Around Christmas time, Youtube offered the three Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" spaghetti westerns for free download. I downloaded them, and have watched two so far. One of them, "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, is the 4th best movie of all time (under its Italian name) on IMDB's top 250 list. It is really quite good. It's not worthless at all for those who disdain Westerns but like for those who like post-apocalypse movies: the old West in the movie is quite unreal. The characters wander in an out of huge endless Civil War battles that are apparently supposed to be in Texas. The landscape is nothing like the real old West at all, let alone Texas, and it was filmed in Europe, which makes it all the more unreal. And I didn't mention that the Union and Confederate soldiers talk just alike, with no distinguishing accents. The movie is nearly 3 hours, but when it ended, I wished there was more. These Clint Eastwood movies were a direct inspiration for Stephen King's "Gunslinger" series, and it is easy to see how, when you watch them.
Below is a Youtube video of Stan Ridgway and Wall of Voodoo playing live at the Atlanta 688 Club in 1982. It's anachronistic in time and place, maybe about some sort of journey to California in the 1980s passing through some version of the old Wild West. Some of the lyrics:
...and then the old-timer pulled him close and said, `you've come a long way, i know, you got a longer drive ahead through the bones of a buffalo, through the claims of the western dead and just like the spokes of a wheel you`ll spin round with the rest, you`ll hear the drums and the brush of steel, you`ll hear the call of the west.` / call of the west you`ll hear the call of the west / call of the west"...
And it begins with the herald call of the ulullating whistle echoing the Morricone soundtrack for "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"
Here is Joe Jackson's similar take. The video is from a concert in Tokyo in 1986. This one also begins with the Morricone-like whistle effect. Both of these songs are Western, but not "Country and Western":
....You keep pushin' on when your friends keep turning back And you keep building towns and laying railroad track And things get crazy and you have to use that gun And you wonder if this is the way the west is won....
Around the blog neighborhood, one fellow blogger recently blogged about snow like they hadn't seen in quite a while.
I'm sure a lot of other bloggers, especially in the eastern part of the US, are seeing a whole lot of snow this time of year. I picked up an old "Calvin and Hobbes" book this morning to look at. I had not read or seen "Calvin and Hobbes" for many years, other than the ubiquitous Calvin stickers I see on the backs of cars almost every day. The Calvin cartoon below is appropriate for those seeing snow this time of year when they usually don't see it at all, and the snow they see will soon be gone: I'm not finding anything like an official "Calvin and Hobbes" website to go to, but click here for someone else's page which shows other funny winter "Calvin and Hobbes" comics, mostly involving snowmen. Around here, the snow isn't anything unusual, and the big storms seem to pass way south of us. How is everyone dealing with the heavy snow, and does anyone else have fond memories of reading "Calvin and Hobbes" ?
I recently thought of doing a blog post related to Jane Weidlin's song "East Meets West", but it is not found on Youtube. So then I went to see what was available.
Below is Jane Weidlin singing an acoustic version of a song called "One Hundred Years of Solitude". It is off of her brilliant self-titled album from 1985. If you don't remember Weidlin's name at all, you have probably seen her. She was Joan of Arc in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" and she was a member of the Gogo's. She has a high and easily over-processed voice, and this "unplugged" song shows the strength of her vocal talent.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is also the title of a great novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. I don't know if Jane Weidlin read it and was inspired by it, or just liked the title. Either way, the song has nothing to do with the book, near as I can tell. I loved the novel, but haven't read anything else by the author yet.
Postcard of the Day Below is a view of Calle de Bolivia, Medellin, Colombia, from about 100 years ago.
Yesterday's post was about the Memphis pyramid. There was some discussion of pyramids in general in the post and comments. A commenter/reader pointed out an American pyramid (or pyramids, really) that I was not aware of. I looked it up, and found this fantastic photo: It's one of those public domain Wiki Commons photos, and is not from a postcard. I see three pyramids here, and maybe a fourth one to the left. These pyramids are part of an attraction called Moody Gardens. It reminds me a little of the city in Logan's Run, which featured some straight-sided pyramids, and still more shaped like Atari symbols.
This blog post [NextGreatFuture] has an interesting discussion of the pyramids of "Logan's Run", the pyramids of "Blade Runner", and actual plans for a pyramid in Dubai.
I've never been to Galveston, but the name reminds me of the old Glen Campbell song, below:
I also remember when some new kids joined the class in grade school, having moved away from Texas to find oil jobs in Northern Michigan. Imagine that. Well, we'd hever heard anything like that accent before.
Below is a postcard view, also from Galveston's Gulf shore area, of the railroad on the causeway, from 1910.
Here's a new entry in "Postcard Friendship Friday", and another Tennessee postcard.I've been to Memphis a few times, and have stayed in a hotel with a close view of the pyramid. I have some pictures I took around somewhere, including one of the pyramid in a lightning storm, if only I could locate it.
This building brings to mind the hotel called "the Pyramid of Gizeh", which is found in the latter "Sookie Stackhouse" novels. The author Charlaine Harris located the pyramid-shaped vampire hotel in the city of Rhodes, which is a fictionalized version of either Chicago or one of its very large suburbs. The last time I recall an author making a fictional version of Chicago was Scott Turow, who created Kindle County for his legal thriller novels. Last time I checked, his Kindle County novels are indeed available on the Amazon Kindle. Charlaine Harris attended Rhodes College in Memphis, which is probably why she gave a fictional city the name of Rhodes.
There is a pyramid near Chicago, but I've not seen it. It's not very big. Certainly not as big as the Sears Pyramid found in this blog post. The actual pyramid is called the Gold Pyramid. Click here for tour information.
The one pyramid I have been in actually is a hotel. It's the Luxor in Las Vegas. While it doesn't house vampires, it does house another undead species: the folks you see in casinos at all hours of the morning. Click here for a great view of it.
The pyramid in Memphis is actually a sports stadium, not a hotel. At one time it houses the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team, but at the time of this 1991 postcard, it was the home stadium of the University of Memphis Tigers basketball team.
How many pyramids have you seen? The ones in Egypt count. The ones on the TV show "Lost" do not.
Addendum: When I first thought of this post a few weeks ago, I was going to include a video clip with the song "Memphis" by Joe Jackson. I forgot yesterday, so here it is now:
This video contains two songs. "Memphis" starts at about 3:02. The video should start there when you play. It was said to be based somewhat on the old "Batman" TV show theme song. There are a lot of other songs that mention Memphis.
Memphis - where the hell is Memphis? Memphis - where the hell is Memphis?
I got to get away, study my geography I’m just a shadow of the boy I used to be I used to see the light, now it’s all a mystery I used to feel the beat, now I feel a million miles from...
Memphis - where the hell is Memphis? Memphis - where the hell is Memphis?...
Mistakes happen, typos happen. But I do have to wonder when they happen over and over. I've been hearing on the radio lately an announcement about an event at East Bay Cavalry Church. That's cavalry, as in soldiers on horseback. Not Calvary, as in the hill where the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. You'd think they might have corrected it after the first time, but no. I've heard it many times.
This web page seems to have it straight. Surely this one will stirrup some comments and spur some of you to hitch some comments to this post.
A local chain bookstore closed a couple of weeks ago, and before they closed they had a clearance sale. Cheap new books.
I decided to stock up, and got a bag of books:
Skinwalker by Faith Hunter. Looks like a Cherokee vampire slayer.
Bloodring: A Rogue Mage Novel By the same author as Skinwalker
Magician: Apprentice. by Raymond E. Feist. I stood in line for close to two hours waiting for the special Avatar premiere a while back, and a guy in the line told me that I should read the Raymond E. Feist books, starting with this one. I was glad to find it at the sale.
Silverthorn by Raymond E. Feist. Same series.
Magician; Master by Raymond E. Feist. Same series.
Jimmy the Hand by Raymond E. Feist and S.M. Stirling. I think it is the same series as above.
The Far Kingdoms by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but here I did. I liked the cover, so I bought it
Vampire$ by John Steakley. A novel about a professional vampire slayer. Yes, the title ends in an $ like that old Vega$ TV series with Robert Urich. I didn't check to see if he was killing vampires in Cleveland, Ohio.
Blood and Rust: Two Novels of the Cleveland Undead, by S.A. Swiniaraski. Well, I had no idea that Cleveland had such a vampire problem, but there does appear to be a sub-genre about Cleveland vampires.
Dragons & Dwarves by S. Andrew Swann. Sounds like a D&D adventure? No, this one is also about Cleveland. But maybe it is also like a D&D adventure: looking at the back cover, it appears that in the novel a dragon sets the Cuyahoga River ablaze.
Must Love Hellhounds by Charlaine Harris and others. This has characters from the Sookie Stackhouse ("True Blood") books, and I've already read all of those.
So, where to start? Which of these books sounds the most interesting to my readers who are readers? If any of them do sound interesting?
You can't beat free stuff at a free movie. Other stuff wasn't free though. "House of Doggs" was there, serving the usual wide variety of hot dogs. Some of their many offerings include: 
Postcard of the Day
